Meso-American Civilization

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In the past few years I have dedicated a lot of time to studying the indigenous cultures of the Americas. I have noticed that the different urban civilizations that developed all seemed to decline in a similarly quick manner. The Olmec, Nazca, Mayans, Cahoka... All of them seemed to reach a certain golden age of megalithic construction and agricultural surplus before disappearing over a century or two into the jungle. What I have been curious about is why these patterns persist. One thing in common with most Meso-American civilizations is the overall religious significance in daily life. The Meso-Americans, in my opinion, gave way too much credit to their gods, and not enough credit to themselves. Thus, in repeating patterns, they did not observe the way that they deforested and ruined the land; they often ended up growing too dense in population, and because of their city-state nature, often ended up covering the most valuable farmland with their cities. I am wondering if anybody else here has any theories on why this trend seemed to occur? Just to clarify, in case any one reads into my religious statement incorrectly: I am not bashing their religion but rather pointing out that it was pervasive to the point that wars occurred between states solely for the purpose of capturing sacrifices "Flower Wars"
Additionally, given enough time, do you think the urban civilizations of America may eventually have gotten it 'right', and perhaps been able to maintain an independent existence from Europe? Or, furthermore, had the dark age of Europe persisted and nobody ever bothered crossing the Atlantic, do you think that Meso-American civilization could have developed to a similar point that Europe was at at the time of Columbus' arrival, perhaps 'discovering' Europe in an ironic twist of fate? All hypothetical, of course, but I am curious if anyone else has wondered about this.

I think wood is a factor. A city needs wood for construction and heating and cooking.

After they have cut down all the trees for 50 miles they are in big trouble.

Then again, the Chinese and Indians have cities that are thousands of years old so how did they solve the problem?

I suspect the religious aspect is a sidebar. If you look closely, you will note that the longest lasting civilizations [keeping a step down from technical here] have trended to be egg Egypt, Sumeria and post conquest successor states in Mesopotamia, China - all with big time river systems bringing water and renewing nutrients for agriculture AND providing for easy trade, or egg Phoenicia, the Greek complex, Rome, with good access to sea routes [compare Spain and England later].

Americas - Besides rainforest for the Maya, mountains for the Quechua, swamp for the Aztecs, they did not have practical river or sea routes to anywhere significant, no beasts of burden beyond dogs and llamas and no wheeled transport. This is going to have limited reach and viability. It might have been interesting if a culture had started cities up about a third of the way up the Amazon.

Most of the Meso-American cultures had societies that exploded on the scene and the off of it. Many were highly brutal and despite creating fantastic art and architecture they never really established a functional social contract with their neighbors or amongst themselves.

The evidence of this is quite blatant among the Aztecs, their power was based on a a very unstable balance of power and when it changed they could not recover. The Maya show similar problems, the evidence seems to show their cities were destroyed by fire and many of the rich houses show signs of being targeted for destruction. Similar fates befell Eurasian Empires. The Hunnic, Mongol, Seleucid, Achaemenid, Macedonian and even the Crusader Kingdoms all experienced spectacular decline, due at least in part to a failure to create social contracts among the conquered or establish a stable rule that could withstand outside shocks.

I am intuiting a notion here. For a civilization to last a very long time, it must be environmentally sustainable. No civilization can live beyond its means. When it consumes utterly the very things in nature that support it, it will collapse. Similar things happened with the Hopi and the Anasatzi. Due to their own over use or perhaps a climate change to which they could not adapt these two advanced cultures went belly up really fast.

Which leads me to a thought. Perhaps we should not assume that our civilization will be around for ever. If we foul our nest and eat up our seed corn, we too are doomed. Perhaps Jared Diamond has a point.

If we sink our own boat, then we shall drown.

ruveyn

Geography.

Due to their isolated nature in the americas those cultures had little to no access to effective beasts of burden and animal husbandry.

They relied almost exclusively on hunting non-tameable animals and the few that were domesticated had a low cost to benefit ratio (llamas). Due to the regions they lived in, they also relied on a mono-crop for their primary diet: corn.

While they did manage to build large cities (impressive ones at that) they did so very late compared to equivalent euro/africa/eastern civilizations.

Why their cities and civilizations failed (they were all in steep decline by the time the europeans arrived) I think is attributed to their reaching a critical point .. they could not produce enough food to feed their populations. This happened to the Maya, Aztec and the Inca ..all three were geographically quite apart (considering foot transportation of the time) and all of them have a history of constant famines and large die-offs as well as cities being abandoned...and constant warfare to gain food-producing land.

That was their situation due to no large meat-producing domesticated animals, single-crop dependency and large/rapid population growth under the best of times. Add a few natural disasters every now and then... floods or droughts and it becomes apparent that they just could not sustain their growth.

Well, it was either disease or the flood that killed them all off.

RE: The gods : When drought or another disaster happens, its possible that the people believed that the gods do not favor their leaders anymore and the system loses legitimacy.

What's interesting is that the Aztecs expected their own downfall. They're the only Meso-American culture that I've studied. Perhaps the apocalyptic nature of their religion was due to the fact that civilizations in that area rose and fell, since natural limitations and religion influence each other.

Had Europe never crossed the Atlantic, Meso-American civilizations would have continued along the same pattern of rise and fall. Perhaps becoming even more complex and advanced (though, I sometimes think the Aztecs took that as far as it could go with Meso-American technology and mindset). Europe would've had to have been a lot slower for an ironic discovery of Europe, but it's not impossible.

I agree that religion was a fairly big factor with at least the Aztecs. The Aztecs weren't agriculturally backward (far from it) since they did have enough food. The chinampa system was highly organised and they didn't just eat maize, but also beans, squash, tomoatoes, avocadoes and guavas...they also grew cotton and planted rubber trees. They also had an impressive system of canals in Tenochtitlan (if no wheels). They were not unsustainable economically, just socially. They did have a bad famine in 1450, but famines were still a common occurrence in Europe at that time, too. If they didn't have the ostentation of the nobles (fostered by their religion) they would've focused their efforts more on feeding the mass rather than giving the emperor his countless cups of chocolate and tonnes of gems. They did have the transport to do it, but their ideology, bolstered by their religion, made the social system unsustainable.

At least with the Mexica (Aztecs), I think it was not an unsustainable way of life, as far as agricultural practices and city-size were concerned. It is because they took their gods too seriously and because they had a prophecy of their own downfall. I know European Christians also expected doomsday, but that attitude waned slightly with the Early-Modern period (discounting times of plague, famine and civil war). They lived like it was the last days, at least their rulers did. If the Mexica had experienced an increase in free-thought, similar to that of the European Renaissance, they would've adapted better as a culture and become more robust both ideologically and technologically. The gods gave them this silly model of warfare where you fight to capture and get sacrifices...compared to the Early-Modern European mode of fighting, where you fight wars to get stuff and for not many other reasons (civil wars excluded).

It is also posited that due to the Contact (with Europe) many of them die from diseases. I'd need to check the numbers, but i think it was estimated in the millions. =/

Most of the plants domesticated by the human race were first domesticated by the native americans in the New World.

Most of the animals domesticated by man were were first domesticated in the old world.

The old world had the best beasts of burden- including the oxen, and the horse.
Thats why the old world developed more rapidly in mechanical engineeering
The native americans only beast of burden was the dog-except for the small wimpy camelids of the Andes Mountains. So the amerindians did not invent the plow, and wheels were only used on children's toys.
So this accidental distribution of domesticatable animals and plants set the old world into motion in ways that guaranteed the old world would discover the new and not the other way around.
If the Europeans hadnt discovered America the Chinese or the Arabs would have.

But if the american indians had magically been kept in isolation how would New World civilization evolved?
Its hard to say.

Europe/Middle east had wheat,barley and other grain crops that could provide sustenance. The americas were very limited and corn was the only crop that could feed large populations.

By sustainable I didn't mean that they would not be able to feed themselves all the time.. I meant in in the sense that their populations would grow beyond the capacity for their mono-crop to provide them with nutrition. Thats why, unlike europe, the american ancient natives had constant, drastic famines (in europe famines would kill a lot of people but would not be bad enough to have cities be abandoned or entire cultures/civilizations fall).

Thank you everybody for your insightful replies

Both wrong and right.

Virtually everything in a modern American grocery store is made out of corn, or has corn in it, or is butchered from the flesh of an animal feed by corn. If corn can be the keystone that it is of modern American civilization it couldve been that for an advanced native american civilization as well.

But even more important than corn is that other New World plant-the Potato.
The impact of the potato on Europe was incalculable because it was a far better a crop than the grains Europe had been growing for centuries- more out put per acre- and more reliable against famine than wheat/rye/barley.

The potatoe enabled big cities to appear in Northern Europe for first time. Enabled Northern Europe to catch up with and eventually surpass the mediterranean world.
Russia, Germany, and even Britain, may not have become great powers if the Incas hadnt invented the potato.
So native americans had little need for European crops.

But there were two problems- the native americans didnt have animals to pull plows- and thus did not have the efficient plow-based agricultural system that Europe and Asia had.

The other problem was that -though corn growing was the norm over a huge swath of the New World ( both mexico and peru and virtually all of what is now the USA both east and west) the potato never got out the Andes mountains until the Spanish conquest.



American Indian farmers in Washington State and in British Columbia Canada LOVED growing potatoes to supplement their diets- but they got potatoes from the white man in the 19th centurey not from thier fellow native americans who had invented potato growing in the andes moutains thousands of years before.

So if not for the White Man native americans, even native amerians in the "famous potato" state of Idaho, would never have gotten the idea of growing potatoes.

So native american civilization had no need of Europe's crops. Indeed it was European civilization that got jumpstarted by the introduction of native american crops.

But the native americans were limited in their ability to exploit the botantical riches that they already had. They couldnt plow, and they were slow to exchange ideas. Even ideas as important as planting spuds. Those flaws might well have been fatal..

True, the potato is a great staple crop but as you pointed out... the ancient americans could not cultivate it in quantities due to lack of work animals.

Corn today is a staple for industry for the same reasons it was good for the ancient americans: its easy to grow in large quantities and its nutritious. If corn suddenly died off there would not be famines because we do have a large supply of other crops available. Europe was in the same situation. Now the potato in europe was (ironically) so good because the europeans did have the capability to plow fields in large quantities and the potato was much more resistant to weather conditions than wheat/barley/etc were.. plus europe lacked diseases and insect predators that would harm its production as they were all left behind in the americas.

There is a European equivalent to the inca/aztec/maya famine cycle: The Irish Potato Famine was the result of the potato becoming a mono-crop. Ireland suffered terribly.. losing nearly 25% of its total population. If one applies a similar effect to an ancient american culture and made it a constant cycle of famines...it would be devastating. 100 years is about 4 generations of people (25yrs avg when next generation is born)... and that one person could potentially live to see 2 to 4 famines in their lifetime (60yrs)..each losing up to 25%... add war, disease and other causes of death besides famine and you can imagine just how slowly their population grew and how cataclysmic one particular bad famine could be to a city-state civilization.